Xiaomi’s Eighth sale of budget phone Redmi 1S will go for another “Flash Sale” on Tuesday of 60,000 units via e-commerce giant Flipkart at 2.00 PM sharp but the pace of sale has come down to minutes of late, not seconds, according to online Twitter messages across India, reflecting dwindling interest among the buyers.

More than the flash sale, the firm Xiaomi has come under pressure last week when the Indian Air Force has advised its rank and file and family members of the staff not to buy the Redmi 1S phones due to security concers. Xiaomi has its servers in Beijing and all the users’ data and passwords are sent home for upkeep and the process has raised security and privacy concerns in view of the increased hacking attempts by the China-based and some semi-official organizations.

Moreover, India and China had fought a war in 1962 that resulted in India’s only defeat in the hands of any neighbour since Independence in 1947. Indian security forces are still wary of interacting with the Chinese-made products though Chinese machinery is cheaper in India. Leaving apart the security concerns, the move has forced Xiaomi to scurry for cover immediately and announce several measures, including swift shift of servers to California in the US and Singapore.

Otherwise, Xiaomi has announced the eighth flash sale for its Redmi 1S smartphones in India, via Flipkart on Tuesday at 2 PM for pre-registered users but the company is silent on how many seconds it took in its 7th sale, a practice that it was upholding since July. Moreover, it has not revealed the number os users so far for its 8th sale and also the number of Xiaomi Redmi 1S smartphones available for online sale.

It also said only one smartphone will be sold per email ID. It has advised as usual to register at least 2 hours before 2 PM. Further, the company has discontinued its free gifts or add-ons such as the screen protector and Micro-SIM card adapter from the 7th sale onwards. While the time taken for the 7th Flash sale is still not revealed by the company, it took 4.2 second in the sixth sale to sell 100,000 units in a flash of mement, upsetting many of the 300,000 users who had queued up for it after pre-registration.

Even on Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale, it was sold online without any requirement for pre-registration and more than 150,000 units were sold though in minutes, if not seconds owing to the website crash. The 5th flash sale saw 60,000 Xiaomi Redmi 1S smartphones sold in 13.9 seconds, the 4th flash sale saw 60,000 Xiaomi Redmi 1S units sold in 5.2 seconds.

In its 3rd sale, 40,000 Redmi 1S units were sold in just 3.4 seconds, which was slightly faster than the time it took in its second flash sale that was done in 5.2 second. The first flash sale of Redmi 1S sold 40,000 units in 4.2 seconds.

The Redmi 1S is also on sale in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

It runs on a version of MIUI. modified from Android 4.3 Jellybean, and the Redmi 1S sports dual SIM, one the standard SIM and the other for nano SIM with its own batteries and own recharger.

It has an 8-megapixel camera with a wide f/2.2 aperture and a LED Flash and provides burst mode, auto-focus, zero shutter lag, HDR and real-time filters and the second camera with 1.6 megapixels is good for selfies.

The device is switchable between the ‘Light Mode’ that shows bigger icons and the ‘Feature Mode’ that displays small icons. Battery used is a 2000 mAh one. The Mi Redmi 1S is fitted with a 1.6GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with Cortex-A7 core. Xiaomi also unveiled an OTA (over-the-air) system update for the Xiaomi Redmi 1S, including fixes for major bugs. It was here Xiaomi was sending the user data to its servers in headquarters attracting IAF ban.

More than the specs, Xiaomi has brought forth an entirely new concept in online flash sale unique to e-commerce websites and Flipkart is the major beneficiary and the sale strategy remains a lesson for many ad honchos in years to come, while IIMs and other business institutes will include it a must-study soon.

2 comments

Haters will hate but i have personally tested the device and the device although heats up a bit but this heating up is found in s5 also so heating should not be the only criteria when deciding to buy the phone.This phone has also redefined the whole budget segment in india GO XIAOMI